Category Archives: FanFic

So, back when I started my series on The Te’s work, we had a chance to sit down and talk about fanfic and fanfic communities. I said in the beginning, that I would be posting interviews with fanfic authors, and I hope for this to be one of many.

Now, I am an informal person, and my interview style is exactly that: informal. It’s done through gchat, and involves both serious questions about writing and fan communities, as well as fannish squeeing and flailing. You’re getting all of it, including telling hints of both my personality, and The Te. The only editing was format editing for easy reading. Don’t you feel lucky. 🙂

I present to you now, raw and unedited, my evening with The Te.

Te: Hola.

me: hello!

Te: How are you?

Wait, no, I hate this, I have to change chat programs right now. Gimme just a few.

(AIM SUCKS)

me: lol

ok

Te: Okay, then.

me: welcome back

Te: How are you?

me: I’m good. Excited. Having a bit of that “Ireadyourblogandthereforeknowmoreaboutyouthanyouknowaboutme!” feeling that I get at, like, ComicCon

How are you?

Te: ahahhahahhaa. You certainly know more about my vagina than I know about yours. And that’s… okay. FOR NOW.

me: hahah. muahaha

Te: I’m goodish. Finally recovering from the stupid cold, dealing with the messiest period to date, fighting a migraine… but somebody sent me ridiculously awesome fb.

me: goodish is good. periods are the cruelest joke ever played on a living being. and Feedback is awesome. I realized I spent enough time raving about you to my friends, that I should share with people who would actually care…

Te: giggles Spread the gospel of Te?

me: always and forever, amen

Te: hands you my ego to massage It likes the sesame-infused oil best.

me: cracks knuckles just relax

Te: snerf

me: hehe. seriously, though. I found your work at an impressionable age. and it inspired me

Te: cackles I totally write for people At That Age. Because fuck knows I could’ve used more than the Story of O, the Carpetbaggers, and cadged Hustlers when I was a tween.

me: heh. truth.

Te: Sometimes I wonder what it’s like for teenagers now, when all of their questions about kink have answers right there. Answers that can be accessed in perfect privacy, even.

me: I think, no matter what information is available, it can be overwhelming. Becuase it’s there, but you need to search for it. And if you don’t know to search…

Te: nod nod Very true. I also wonder… well, I wouldn’t have found fandom without the help of a bad search engine.

me: haha.

Te: There has to be room for “tripped over this while searching for something else”

me: always. which, if you are amenable, leads me to my First Official Interview Question: When/how did you discover fandom? and a follow up, which was your first?

Te: December 1997. I was lonely, sick, depressed, sick, horny, and also sick. I’d recently been told I had an incurable disease (FMS), and I felt like crap on a number of levels. My friends were all able-bodied — and in school. The usual thing. I turned to the internet for some relief, and remembered — vaguely — a Batman/Robin story (one of the first m/m things I was ever exposed to) I’d found on the original alt.sex.stories back in ’94 or so, and tried to find it again. Webcrawler sent me, instead, to R’rain’s old Trekslash archive, and after staggering around in shock, I started reading. With torch’s “Too dear for my possessing.” I gibbered and came all over myself multiple times, sent feedback that was probably ridiculously creepy, and kept reading. torch wrote back, and I realized that I had found the holy grail: a community of women as perverted — if not more so — as I was. I was hooked immediately. Torch’s archive led me to X-Files fiction, and that was even hotter for me — despite the fact that I’d never watched the show. I started watching in early ’98, and, in March, “The Red and the Black” aired. Krycek kissed Mulder, and I decided it was time to get involved. I posted my first story on or near March 21, 1998, and never looked back.

me: did you find that happening often? That one fandom would lead you to another?

Te: ponders Yes…? Ish? Back in the days when I was devouring other people’s fic right and left (I read very little these days), I would often find an author I liked and read everything s/he/ze put out, and thus find new fandoms. But there would also be things like me sitting in front of the television and randomly flipping to TNT just as CKR walked onscreen shirtless. (due South)

me: Funnily enough, I know exactly the scene you’re talking about and it had the same reaction with me

Te: hahahhahaa Yes. God, that man is sex on legs.

me: yeth

Te: I watched a lot of random movies and television shows just to get my CKR fix. I’m still very fond of ‘For Those Who Hunt The Wounded Down.’

me: I haven’t seen that one. I’m still trying to get my hands on Hard Core Logo– I think it’s the third(?) one down on my Netflix queue.

Te: Ohhhh, HCL! SO GOOD. I always wanted to be able to write good stories for that movie, but the voices utterly escaped me.

me: there is nothing more frustrating and I thank the internet that youtube exists now.

(Pause)

me: you mentioned before that “Krycek kissed Mulder, and I decided it was time to get involved.” What made you decide to write as opposed to read?

Te: Well, it was… that moment? I mean, I was sitting in a room with all my guy friends — I was visiting my old school that weekend — and we were flipping back and forth between X-Files and a hockey game, and then the kiss happened, and I literally yelled. “It’s true! OMG IT’S TrUE! IT’S ALL TRUE!” And at that point I had to explain slash to some very confused (if open-minded) young men. And I was just… itching inside until I could get home to my computer and find some place where I could talkabout how amazing this all was. I found the AOL slash forums, made some friends, and went on from there. One of those friends just happened to want to write a story that sounded like fun to me, and we co-wrote a silly little thing involving Pendrell. And then we wrote more. And then I wrote more than that.

me: This is the second time you’ve mentioned finding others “like you” online. I’ve talked about fandom in terms of community on my blog. How do you view fandom? How would you explain it to the uninitiated?

Te: Heaven? ahahhaha It’s hard to say. Fandom saved my life, so even though there are horrible people, and people who have never escaped middle school — no matter how old they actually are — and racists who don’t know they’re racists, and misogynists who don’t know they’re misogynists and refuse to admit it… well. To me, it’s a nation made up of many smaller states (individual fandoms), and within those states are various smaller cities, each with their own characters and neighborhoods — and some of those neighborhoods are horrifying… etc., etc. We’re all one, though, and I think most of us know that, and do our best to advance the various causes both great and small. And that marks me as about as American as they come, I think. ahahaha

me: haha! That’s a great analogy.

What’s do you love best about fandom? least?

Te: What I love best about fandom is, without a doubt, the way it allows sexuality — specifically various non-standard-to-Western-media sexualities — to burgeon and thrive. I’ve known for years that I would never be able to put up with a non-fannish lover again, and that’s true for many reasons — from the fact that I’d have nothing to talk about with a mundane to the fact that most mundanes don’t have any idea how to talk about their kinks. I mean, it takes so much time with a mundane just to get to “you know, sometimes stories with golden showers can be hot,” whereas Jan Q. Fancreature probably read that story. And maybe everything else by that author, too. It’s not that I need to have wildly kinktastic sex every time — I can’t even move that much — but I like having the options.

What I like least… well, fandom reflects what it’s given in terms of the media… and the media fucking sucks when it comes to issues of race. Many — many — fancreatures have no fucking clue what to do with characters of color, and the ones who would be thoughtful about it are often too terrified to give it a try. And, even when the media does give us interesting characters of color… shakes head. The “two pretty White guys” trope is — still — pretty huge in slash. Basically, you’re far more likely to get slash of two pretty White guys than of the brown guy — whoever he happens to be — no matter how much slashy background the brown guy has. It’s pathetic, and depressing, and it’s one of the reasons why I’ve set up shop for so long in a fandom where brown people are thin on the ground. It doesn’t matter that there’s hardly any Black Lightning slash out there — to me — because I don’t know anything about the character, and neither do most of the rest of us reading the comics.

me: i used to work in a comic shop. And I remember very clearly having a conversation with my coworker about characters of color in comics…and how if their name is “Black —” chances are good they’re not white. It took him ten minutes to realize he couldn’t argue with that. Black Canary never occured to him. Because she’s a woman, and that’s a whole nother area are “argh”

Te: Yarrrrrrrrrrrgh. Yeah. That. And? Black Manta was just Manta until they took his helmet off.

me: you know, for a community that’s supposed to be for the “outsiders” comics kinda suck at it. sometimes. currently. And that’s why we have fandom.

What’s your favorite fandom to write in?

Te: Well, I think a very, very large number of comics fans never wanted to be outsiders in the first place. I mean, you get storyline after storyline where the outsider characters are punished and/or “normalized.” From the Morlocks to Jason Todd and beyond. And these storylines are hella popular… with a very, very large number of fans. And… I’m going to be diplomatic here and leave it at that. By far, my fave fandom is DC. I identify with huge stacks of characters, which means I can write huge stacks of characters, which means that very few things get old. When I want to write something new, I just leave Tim out of it, you know? There are het pairings I like. There are femslash pairings I like. There are threesomes and foursomes and moresomes I like. That just didn’t happen in my other fandoms. The only one that came close was Buffy, and the number of available characters there seems paltry compared to what I have to work with here.

That said… heh. I miss being a part of fandoms where I could count on thirty or more pieces of feedback per story.

me: DC fandom is woefully small

Te: That said… I don’t even manage to answer all of my feedback in a remotely timely fashion now. I used to spend fewer hours writing. I used to have more hours to do fannish things. It all makes it… hmm… just fine that I’m where I am.

me: I, for one, am very glad that you are. You mentioned Tim, so I have to ask. Reading your Tim is what made me follow him in comics in the first place. What attracted him to you in the first place?

Te: ahahahhaa Well. eyes Jack

Te: Okay, no, go back a bit: I fell in love with DCAU Tim Drake as soon as his episodes started airing. Just — madly in love. I wasn’t ‘shipping him at all back then — I was young enough to be woefully ignorant of my own kinks — but he twisted my heart right up and I wanted everything for him. Just — everything. So, when I started writing DCAU fic in 2003 or so, wee little Timmy started popping in. My stories with him that took a sexual turn were all about the abuse, so, when I put him in a happy story — Sing we joyous all together, I believe — that was meant to be wholly Bruce/Wally and people started clamoring for Bruce/Tim slash, I was stunned. I mean, when I wrote it I recognized that there were slashy lines in, but they were anything but intentional, and I edited them out. And I was all “Bruce and Tim’s relationship isn’t like that! At all!” And they were like “it is so! In the comics!” And I was all “I don’t know anything about the comics!” And Jack was all “MWAHAHHAHAHAHAH!!!”

Jack and I had been casual friends for a couple of years — since Smallville fandom threw us together via Jenn/seperis — and Jack just… profiled me. Ze went through hir comic collection for the Timmiest issues likely to catch my interest, packed them in a box, and sent them to my doorstep. At right around the same time, my computer died hard and I couldn’t do any writing or chatting with other people. Jack and I started talking on the phone. I read the comics. We told each other stories about the characters. The stories got heated. By the time I had a computer again — this was right around January 2004 — I was well and truly a comics and Tim Drake fan, and Jack and I were rather more than just friends.

me: okay, I tried to say several things, but all I can think is “aww!” That’s romance! Fandom bringing people together.

Can you tell me a bit about your writing process?

Te: giggles Yesss. There really ought to be fannish matchmaking services. So many people who don’t even realize that they belong together!

Process. Process. Uh… okay, there are a few options:

1) I dream something, and it’s so damned cool/porny/cracktacular that I have to write it. This doesn’t happen often, but when it does — purr.

2) I’m wanking, and I come up with something so perfect that it has to go in a story. And then I damned well build a story around it. I figure out how the characters got from point canon to point fucking, I sketch in a universe around them, and then I start writing. This happens pretty damned often, as these things go.

3) I’m chatting with my pre-readers or other friends, and we’re just talking shit about the characters, and they say something so brilliant that I lose my mind and start writing as soon as I’ve interrogated them a little and gotten permission. Most memorably this happened with “Sport us while we may.”

4) My pre-readers plot and scheme for some terrifying length of time about how best to get their bunny to lodge in my mind. They slip it into conversation. I fuss and fight. I whine. I bitch. Some time later, I damned well write it anyway. Pixie and Mildred are the masters of this. They do this shit to me all the time, and I love them for it.

5) Random fancreature out of the blue says “I’ll pay you money if you write this!” Te says “cha-CHING!”

But the process itself…

Hmm. I come up with a first line. This can take anywhere from three minutes to years. Once I have the first line down, the next lines usually come fairly easily. I never write out of order — that fucks me up something awful, because I almost never outline and have only successfully outlined (meaning, figured out what would happen in the story when and then was right about that) three or four times. Lately, I’ve had a lot of trouble with… hmm… call it “staying power.” I have something like 2400 pages worth of WIPs. Only a few stories, but they all run up to a certain point and stop. I believe in my soul that I’ll finish them eventually, but I miss the days when I could count on my ability to finish anything I started without extended breaks. Hmm. Does that answer the question? I’m never sure how to talk about ‘process.’

Oh, yeah, I have to have the right music.

The presence or absence of just the right song can change a given story hugely. If, for example, I’d had the song “Mama” by Genesis while I was writing “A single man of good fortune,” Bruce would’ve fucked the unholy hell out of Martha, and never mind all the screaming from the pre-readers.

me: ha! That answers the question wonderfully. And brings us to the last. What is your favorite story that you have written?

Te: ….

The answer to that question changes all the time.

But. As of right this instant, my favorite is “A single man of good fortune.”

1) I always love it when a story sprawls in natural, “neat,” and unexpected ways, and that story was supposed to be about half as long as it turned out to be… with less than half as many characters.

2) It has actual character arcs for several of the characters in it. Almost all of them progress.

3) It is, to me, laugh-out-loud funny in parts.

4) It’s got Dinah and Harvey in — and they’re my sweethearts of the moment.

5) It’s got a believable Jim and a believable Alfred — and those two are fucking hard to write.

6) The porn is pretty damned porntastic, if I do say so myself. My id played merry hell with my writer-brain, and it all worked out well.

7) It helped me work out several more of my myriad issues.

There are other reasons, but I think it’s pretty damned great, overall. It’s not one of my more popular stories, but I’m okay with that. I know it’s awesome.

me: Excellent. Thank you so much for agreeing to this

Te: You’re welcome. This was a lot of fun.

me: I’m glad. I’d have hated for this to be painful

Te: You can always count on my willingness to talk about myself and my stories.

me: excellent Mr Burns hands.

me: Thank you again to talking with me

I hope to chat with you again

I had fun, too!

And that’s it, Ladies and Germs. My evening with the Te, filled with fannishness, writing from/for the “other” and fan communities.

See you next time, and I have to tell you, I’ve been reading this story…

Ok, it’s time, once again, to delve deep into the delightful depravity of our dearly demented (and de-lovely) deconstruction of When He Saw His Own Eyes. When we last left our handsome (and horny) heroes, they had just settled down to dinner, Lex and Tim spiraling ever closer to becoming the powerhouse we know they will be, with Jason adding a voice of reality and holding on for the ride.

In my head, I’ve been referring to this story as “the one where Timmy’s ass saves the DCU.”

Up until recently, this is *also* the only story that I had commented on, on Te’s insanejournal.

Why? Because, believe it or not, I’m really very *shy* when it comes to these things. Part of the reason why I’m writing this blog is to help me get over that.

The other being textual analysis of fan-porn, be it sexytimes or not.

Anyway, the jist of my comment at the time was:

…I figured I should probably comment. This is amazing. All of it. I absolutely love the first meeting between Lex and Tim, and I keep telling myself that I’m just going to read that part. Then the part where Tim tells Lex that he knows about Bruce. Then when Tim tells Dick that he knows about Bruce. Then I say, Oh well, i’d better just read it all again.

I have told my friends about this story. I have told my friends who dont read FANFIC or COMICS about this story. I’ve been calling it the one where Tim meets Lex and FIXES THE DCU WITH SEX. Cause he does. And it’s awesome.

Since then, I’ve read and re-read this story, and it has quickly moved to my top ten Te fics. Then I found out her livejournal had been updating, but not her insanejournal, so I had new stuff to distract myself with. But still, rereading this has the feeling of coming home to a well-thumbed paperback.

Ladies, Gentlemen, and everything inbetween, When He Saw His Own Eyes. “In which families are put together except when they’re not, villains are reformed except when they’re not, and, because this is Teland, people get laid a lot.”

Okay, we’re going to jump, now, from 2005 (Everything Spring) to 2011. Six years of fic separate the original story with this AU-of-an-AU. According to the author notes, the original plot bunny for Everything Spring was a lot darker than the story ended up being. This story is definitely darker, but not quite so dark as, say, Built the Same,but darker than Everything Spring.

My argument, since I chose to accept it, is that this premise can’t truly get thatdark, because of the inherent natures of Tim, Jason, and Bruce, and the dynamic that appears between them when the specter of a Dead Robin never existed.

To say that I have a favorite Te story would be a lie–I have several, and depending on my mood, they cycle through which story is at the top. This series spends a lot of time on the shoulders of giants. It’s Everything Spring, and it’s my favorite AU-that-should-be-cannon–a what-if-Tim-was-caught-being-the-best-stalker-ever story. The first story isLook Around Round, Summary: “I’ll tell *Batman* on you, you freak.”

Quick side note: I both love and hate Te’s summaries. Mostly because they’re usually damn clever–but only after you know what the story’s about. They certainly are memorable, though, and I’ve often had to search for a story by summary rather than by title. I’m particularly fond of this one.

So, go read it. Then read the sequels. Then read the riffs by Petra. It’ll take a while. There’s a lot of story there (and for good reason; it’s an awesome premise.) I’ll be waiting behind the cut.

So, first up in this Feast of Te, is her story arc, The Drowners. (The series begins withWhen At Last Our Starving Eyes). The series starts when Tim first sees the ghost of Jason Todd. Jason, happy that, finally, someone can see him hangs around. They become…close.

If you haven’t read it–go read it. If you have read it, go re-read it. Then come back, and we’ll talk.

Hey, sorry it’s been so long. It’s pretty clear to me now that I wont be able to keep to a set schedule, at least not until life settles down. Which is why this post is so late. hehehe….

So, if you’re a fan of fanfiction, you’e heard of Alternate Endings and Fixits. For those of you not in the know, these are fics that give stories an “alternate ending” or “fix” the story. See what I did there? Ah hah. This is one of the main reasons, I feel, to write fanfiction. The canon story, as it stands, is not filling a particular need. So, the fic writers fill that need. These videos